Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Advice Hillary is too dumb to take

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post is one of the few pundits who understood Trump's appeal off the bat. Instead of looking at the media circus that swirled around Trump, Sargent looked at the message, and told his readers, we're gonna need a bigger vote. Now he has advice for Hillary.From Sargent:

A certain species of fatalism has taken hold among our political classes in general and among Democrats in particular. The idea is that, because Trump has successfully broken so many of our rules — he dispatched a supposedly deep bench of GOP challengers while spending virtually nothing, and while blowing past norms that used to require candidates to adhere to some nominal standard of respect for facts and consistency — it must mean he has a chance at blowing apart the old rules in the general election, too.

And so, you often hear it suggested that Trump can’t be beaten on policy, since facts and policy positions no longer matter; that he is going to attack in “unconventional” ways, so there is more to be feared; that he may be able to ride Rust Belt working class white anger into the White House in defiance of demographic realities; and that he has some kind of magical appeal that Democrats fail to reckon with at their own extreme peril. I don’t mean to suggest Trump should be taken lightly or to denigrate those worries; I have on occasion shared them, too.

But what if this is all wrong? What if it turns out that Trump can be beaten with the relatively conventional argument that Clinton’s priorities and policies are better for a majority of Americans than his are, and with a more effective series of negative attacks on him than he is able to land on her? Maybe the world hasn't gone as crazy as the GOP primaries have made it seem.

Gee, a campaign about issues and not personalities.

How novel.

Instead we get personal attacks and salacious digs about his hands from the press and the world of pundits, who are so ill-informed that for months they thought he wore a toupee. The National Review called him an "ape" in its first account on his candidacy when he entered the race. Faux Philosopher George Will inferred that Trump is the town drunk, which is rather insulting considering it is well known that Trump's older brother, an alcoholic, steered Trump into a lifetime of sobriety. Perhaps Will reads only Cato.

The personal attacks do not work. All they do is make the race a referendum on Trump, with Trump as the victim.

Trump has had a campaign based on ideas: Building a wall and deporting illegal aliens to solve the border problem, re-negotiating free trade pacts, and balancing the budget with a one-time tax increase. But any new idea is considered blasphemy by the Conservative Commentariat that sits on its tax-exempt foundations and leisurely opines on capitalism. Whenever they start losing an argument they shout FREE MARKET, and then call you an ape. (Don't worry. My book in July takes care of the insider's club.)

The Donald beat the pundits who are stuck in the 1980s. Hillary and her 1960s liberalism are next.

Anyway, I praise Greg Sargent for acknowledging what should be obvious, but isn't to those in Washington.

Trump seems to be employing the political equivalent of General Sherman's doctrine of the maddeningly confusing fluctuating Schwerpunkt.

Just as Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first modern general", perhaps a future political history will declare Mister Surber to be the first to spot the first "modern Presidential candidate".

Shrillary will leave most of the insults and smears to her PACs and SuperPACs. Her strategy will be to promise free stuff for everyone in the uneasy coalition of left-wing racists and sexists and illegals that now make up the Party's base. And of course she will avail herself of the Dem all-time favorite tactic of demonizing white male privilege, especially when in the runup to election day major desperation sets in as the polls show her badly trailing Mr. Trump.

Update: According to that video you posted later, Shecky Clinton promises to talk about issues in her campaign. Great, honestly. I don't think that's a promise she will keep, but I still hope she does talk about issues, and moreover gets her surrogates to focus on issues as well. That's something the country needs. And if her campaign forces Trump to engage in a serious discussion of issues, so much the better. Bring the discussion on. Let's see what she's got. I think she's got nothin', but I want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. But it better not be same ole, same ole. because that's not gonna fix the horrendous mess Obama leaves behind for his successor.

The National Review "conservatives", the Wall Street Journal "conservatives", the Fox News "conservatives", the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan Republican Establishment 'conservatives" and the Hillary Clinton campaign ( and it is sometimes hard to tell them apart) all say that Donald Trump does not have a specific plan to grow the economy and to grow jobs. This is not true.

Stephen Moore: The heart of the Trump tax plan is to cut our business tax from the highest in the world down to 15 percent, making our rate one of the lowest. This will reverse the stampede of businesses fleeing out of America -- great companies, such as Burger King and Medtronics.

When the businesses come back, so will good-paying middle-class jobs.

Small businesses -- the backbone of our economy -- will benefit, too. Their tax rate will fall from close to 40 percent to 25 percent, because business owners pay taxes at the personal income tax rate. This will allow companies to invest more and hire more workers here at home. Getting rid of tax loopholes will help pay for these reductions.

Clinton, meanwhile, has hinted at raising the top income tax rate to as much as 50 percent. Business owners will pay above 60 percent of that extra tax. Raising taxes on employers is no way to get them to hire more workers.

FAKE NEWS FOLLIES OF 2017

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I live in Poca, West Virginia, with my lovely wife of 40 years, Lou Ann. I am an Army veteran and Cleveland State graduate. I retired after 40 years as a newspaperman. In 2016, I published "Trump the Press," which drew rave reviews at Power Line and Instapundit.